Exploring the “Goldilocks Zone” of Semiconducting Polymer Photocatalysts by Donor-Acceptor Interactions

0495849 - ÚOCHB 2019 RIV DE eng J - Journal Article
Kochergin, Yaroslav S. - Schwarz, D. - Acharjya, A. - Ichangi, Arun - Kulkarni, Ranjit - Eliášová, P. - Vacek, Jaroslav - Schmidt, J. - Thomas, A. - Bojdys, Michael J.
Exploring the “Goldilocks Zone” of Semiconducting Polymer Photocatalysts by Donor-Acceptor Interactions.
Angewandte Chemie - International Edition. Roč. 57, č. 43 (2018), s. 14188-14192. ISSN 1433-7851. E-ISSN 1521-3773
Institutional support: RVO:61388963
Keywords : conjugated microporous polymers * donor-acceptor systems * fluorescence sensing * photocatalysis * triazine
OECD category: Polymer science
Impact factor: 12.257, year: 2018

Water splitting using polymer photocatalysts is a key technology to a truly sustainable hydrogen-based energy economy. Synthetic chemists have intuitively tried to enhance photocatalytic activity by tuning the length of π-conjugated domains of their semiconducting polymers, but the increasing flexibility and hydrophobicity of ever-larger organic building blocks leads to adverse effects such as structural collapse and inaccessible catalytic sites. To reach the ideal optical band gap of about 2.3 eV, A library of eight sulfur and nitrogen containing porous polymers (SNPs) with similar geometries but with optical band gaps ranging from 2.07 to 2.60 eV was synthesized using Stille coupling. These polymers combine -conjugated electron-withdrawing triazine (C3N3) and electron donating, sulfur-containing moieties as covalently bonded donor-acceptor frameworks with permanent porosity. The remarkable optical properties of SNPs enable fluorescence on-off sensing of volatile organic compounds and illustrate intrinsic charge-transfer effects.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0288739